


Christmas Star

by ThatwasJustaDream



Series: Feb 2017 'Celebrations' Bingo Card [4]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, But Who Knows..., Community: 1-million-words, First Meetings, M/M, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:03:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9969335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: Written for a challenge, the prompt being 'Christmas.'  Who writes a Christmas story in February, and finishes it in July? Someone who knows McDanno's just the answer for it.





	1. Star Light, Star Bright...

Steve had never been one to feel like he had to go along with the crowd if he didn’t want to. But when the crowd was his soon-to-be full-fledged SEAL buddies celebrating their first holiday in New York with all of them over the legal drinking age? Before shipping out to… who the hell knew where? 

A little more peer pressure was involved, tonight.

Not to mention Freddie was running the show for the eight of them - him knowing the city better than they did. It made Steve feel like a frigging loser, that the thing he wanted the very most was to call it a night and go crash.

“Stop being an actual pu…..wuss….” Freddie clearly had caught the moment when Steve’s scowl turned vaguely murderous and chose to moderate his wording, waving them toward the subway stairs. “Everyone’s going. It’ll be fun. So you miss one goddamn workout in the morning, it’s not like…”

“Do you think if I come along… I’m suddenly gonna _want_ to be there?” Steve asked. “That I’m going to be happy downing shots and hitting on women I’m a thousand percent sure I’ll never see again? What part of that sounds like me, to you?”

Freddie got a hand around Steve’s arm, but Steve countered with a palm to Freddie’s leather-jacketed chest, pushing him away. A little too hard, maybe; Freddie looked somewhere between pissed off and confused.

“All right…” he'd shrugged, after a few heavy seconds of silence. “Go back to the hotel, if you want. Someone has to be the responsible one, I guess. Right? Might as well be you, Steve, ‘cause it sure isn’t going to be me, not this week. Not with what we’ve got ahead of us.”

“Yeah. I get it. Go have fun, okay?”

Freddie left with only a nod - but at least he looked resigned, if not pleased about it.

Steve started the thirty block walk back to the hotel rooms they were all sharing, moving fast to try to burn off the not-insignificant amount of liquor and beer they’d already put away. The streets were busy but not packed, and as he got north of Times Square the glare of lights dimmed, the buildings got less mammoth, and he could see Central Park ahead. 

The sky was black; a quarter moon halfway up the sky with a star shining next to it.

‘Christmas Star,’ Steve thought to himself, his heart tightening in his chest. 

Three days shy of Christmas, but maybe it qualified as something to wish on.

“Could you send me someone?” He asked it; out loud but under his breath, eyes going from that star to the crowds every few seconds as he walked. “You know… not for a while, maybe, ‘cause …who the hell knows how long it’ll be before I really have time for a life. But… it would be nice not to have to deal with _everything_ alone. I thought it would be …him. But the last few months? It’s clear…. _that_ one night... it was a fluke. I know it's not going to be him. So, if you could hold on to this wish for future ref…”

His muttered thoughts got cut off in a sudden storm of confusion: Someone slamming into him with an actual thud, pushing an ‘ooof’ from his own body that took Steve’s breath away as he stumbled and nearly fell off the sidewalk and onto 59th Street.

"Shit!" The guy seemed just as stunned, which was the only thing keeping Steve from going from dizzy to furious. "Will you watch where the hell you're going?"

"I _am_ watching where I’m going,” Steve stepped in to tower over him. “Maybe you shouldn’t _run_ down a busy goddamned street that way?”

“I was _not_ running…” the blondie with the blue eyes and a visible chip on his shoulder had the nerve to get right back in at him, too, poking an index finger into Steve’s wool coat with each word. “I was walking. Fast. That’s what we do, here, so pick up the pace and keep your eyes off the sky, sunshine….”

“Are you….serious with this?” Steve grabbed at the finger still poking him, and now they were having a kind of close-quarters, one-handed slap and grab fight. “Did you call me…sunshine?”

“Yeah, on account of the tan. Where’s someone get a frigging tan in December?”

“Coronado, California. Just graduated SEALS last week.”

“Oh…shit. That’s …hardcore. Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re probably going to be up to your neck in it soon, aren’t you?”

“Probably.”

“You better work on your focus,” Blondie said with a solemn nod. “Stargazing and being an Army guy… probably not a good mix.”

“Navy,” Steve said. “And I’m on vacation. I’m allowed to stargaze on vacation. You’re not allowed to run people over on the street…even if you’re in a hurry.”

“Oh, for cripe’s sake…” the guy tried to get by him, a hand going into his own hair to brush it back, looking beyond frustrated when Steve danced around to counter each step and prevent him from leaving. “You want an apology? Okay. I’m sorry you’re too much of an idiot to look out for yourself on the streets of New York, thereby causing me to run into you as I was walking fast and not running. Happy, now?”

“That apology sucked ass,” Steve said, but he let him by.

“Look, I’d love to stand here and make you feel better about your own idiocy but if I don’t get to the bar, I’ll miss my friends and… I find I don’t do nearly as well without a wingman, so…”

“Fine. Go get some,” Steve stepped away. “Seems to be what everyone but me is doing, tonight.”

“Well… it is Saturday, sunshine…” The guy said as he started away. “And the way you look? If you don’t get some…you’re not trying. See you later, okay?”

Steve shook his head and watched him go.

It wasn’t until he’d gotten a good tenth of a mile closer to bed that he really heard it – that ‘see you later.’ 

He looked back, but….Blondie was gone. 

“Nah,” Steve said, eyes looking for the star again. “Not my type. Keep working on it, though. Please.”


	2. First Star I See Tonight

 

It was a Thursday when they made the connection: A late one, too - almost ten p.m., wrapping up reports on a case that had eaten up two weeks of their teams’ personal and professional lives. 

“I’m going out for a beer. Or three,” Danny said to him. “You want in?”

Steve did, if only to be by Danny’s side – but he felt too worn down.

“Thanks. I think I better go home and dream good thoughts about tomorrow.”

“Probably wise,” Danny acknowledged. “But I can’t be that noble, not after what we’ve been dragged through. So…. me? I’m gonna hit a bar and, frankly, see if I can reel in some company to take home. If that isn’t too personal to share.”

It was, Steve thought. Not for the reasons Danny figured, but for reasons that were making him fume, fighting off a blush of pure frustration that wanted to brighten his cheekbones.

“Might as well go get you some, Danno,” Steve hoped he sounded more casual than he felt. “Everyone’s gonna tonight except me, it seems….”

Kono had gone home to Adam, and Chin to Abby and….it was going to be quiet at Steve’s. As usual. Fuck his life.

“Well if you _don’t_ get any….” Danny grabbed his phone and keys, heading for the door. “As good as you look, babe? It’s ‘cause you’re not trying. So there.”

It clicked for Steve, honest to God, right then.

“Wait,” he said.

Softly – he didn’t shout it or anything, but Danny did. Stop.

“Oh… _kay_ ,” Danny said, turning back to see Steve looking frozen in place. “What are we doing, here?”

“You’ve said that to me before.”

“I’ve said a thousand things to you before. What is it about this one that’s keeping me from my intended and deeply… _needed_ mission?”

“Fifty Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue,” Steve said. “I was walking back to my hotel, minding my own business and …you were _running_ down the street….”

Watching it dawn on Danny? Recollection flooding his eyes? It was a huge relief, really, to find he wasn’t wrong.

“I was not _running_!” Danny went from bemused to shouting – zero to sixty in three seconds, as usual, waving the back of a hand at him and then upward. “You were _gazing_ at the sky like you were some kind of a…. _geek_ astronomer, not watching where you were going and…”

Steve couldn’t help it: Chuckling at him, at them both -- the way they were picking up an argument right where they’d left it off….sixteen years ago?

Seventeen. Jesus.

“What do you think it means?” Steve asked.

He regretted it immediately; how soft and heavy his own voice sounded, asking the question. Needy. Danny wasn’t going for that shit, was he?

“It means… absolutely nothing,” Danny said, heading for the door again. “Nada. As in… ‘our nada who art in nada… nada be thy name…’”

“Are you lobbing Hemmingway at me to make me feel like a sentimental idiot?”

“If you want to take it that way? Sure,” Danny was halfway gone, holding the door open long enough to finish his thought. “But I wasn’t commenting on you…just saying….that’s life. It happened, and it means nothing.”

And then he was gone, as quickly as the first time; in search of something, Steve thought, other than him.

-*-

It would have been easy to do something unhealthy that night: Go home and put on his running shoes and pound out five miles too many on top of this stressful week, or maybe knock back shots at some bar where he could be confident that Danny wasn’t.

Steve managed to avoid either: Went home, yes, but instead of beating himself up he hit his shower and put on some shorts, a tee - and walked out to his beach to listen to the waves and stare at the sky.

There would have to be a star up there. Just one. Not far from the moon, kind of like that night.

“What were you doing?” A voice asked him. “All those years ago…why were you staring up like that?”

It hit Steve that he must have been registering it the last couple of minutes; Danny’s car pulling up in his driveway, the back door of his house opening and footsteps coming his way – or he would have turned and tackled him, thinking he was an interloper.

“I was making a wish,” Steve said.

His eyes drifted down to the horizon, but he didn’t turn to face Danny. And so he felt it more than saw it – Danny stepping closer, up by his side, making a softly huffing sound of self-derision.

“There I was, sitting having my _one_ pathetic beer …” Danny said, voice terse. “…and all I could think is that the universe wouldn’t be so randomly cruel as to make me meet you twice in my life.”

“Great,” Steve said. “Very nice, D. Screw you. Go home.”

“Shut up, Steven. My next thought… was maybe it _was_ for a reason,” Danny’s hand was on Steve’s right arm, fingers digging in, and it was all Steve could do to not shake it off. “So….tell me….what were you wishing that night?”

“Nothing important,” Steve glanced at him, barely, and shrugged to sell the lie. “I was wishing I had cab fare, so I didn’t have to walk thirty blocks back to my hotel. That’s all.”

There was a long pause. Steve felt Danny’s hand go away.

“You know, babe…sometimes you’re your own worst enemy.”

And yes…again Danny was gone. This time, Steve felt shaken and close to tears, but…. relieved – because not only did he want to tell him ‘you, too, you bullheaded bastard’….

…something in him really wanted to break Danny’s heart right back, too.

-tbc-


	3. The Wish I Wish Tonight

The next seven days were Steve’s least favorite in a long time - even though the weekend had been relaxing, and Monday kicked off with a break in a case that had them mired for months.

Life was good. What wasn’t good was having no one to celebrate it with beyond a slap on the back and a ‘see you tomorrow, guys.’

It’s not that he and Danny weren’t talking, exactly, it was just that Danny was keeping it professional. Very professional. He couldn’t even be baited into an argument, let alone some pleasant banter. By mid-week, Steve realized he was actually feeling conversation-starved.

-*-

“Steve, can I get a word with you?” Kono asked, at his office door a little too early on Thursday morning.

“Sure, what’s up?”  He pushed away from his desk and closed his laptop, sizing this up.

Didn’t seem like anything too serious, thank goodness - but Kono had a look about her, like she’d considered how to approach the conversation and had a plan.

“I need your advice,” she said. “Having a little problem with a couple of the guys over at HPD.”

“Problem?” Steve asked. “Like a disrespect problem? Because we can take care of that damn quick if….”

“No, no…..thank you, boss….” Kono gave him a smile that said she could deal with morons who crossed her path, but thank you for offering. “It’s between them, nothing aimed at me. We’ve always worked together great, you know? And so have they, except lately… I don’t know what’s up with them, but it’s screwing with everybody’s head and…well it’s making it hard to get the job done, even. They’re on egg shells with each other, and that makes them kind of on egg shells with everyone else, and… I don’t know what to do. Is it my place to say something?”

“Well… I don’t know. You might get a different answer from someone else, Kono: They might tell you to go to HR or wait it out, but…. I’m more a fan of dealing with things like that head on. I mean…be gentle about it, but let them know it’s screwing with other’s lives, and.…”

“Should I tell them both? At once? Or maybe ….”

“I’d pick whichever one you feel most comfortable going to, and just…broach it. Right? Tell ‘em, ‘hey,’ can’t help noticing things are tense lately. Is something up? Anything I can help with?”

“You really think that’s okay?”

“Hell, yeah. Especially if you’ve been dealing with them regularly. They’re bound to know you have their best interests at….”

“Boss,” Kono said. “I can’t help but notice that things between you and Danny have been …off lately. Is something up? Is it anything I can help with?”

The funny part, Steve thought later, was how it dawned on him even before she cut in on him - that he’d just been Scooby-Doo’ed.

“Nice,” he felt himself fidgeting in his chair, trying to look annoyed, but somehow his cuticles were suddenly the most fascinating thing in the room to him. “You tee’d that up good, Officer Kalakaua.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” She did look regretful - not at having done it, though, Steve thought. More at the fact that it had been necessary. “I know Danny can be ….attitudinal sometimes. You know, about the things we have to do and deal with in our line of work. Is there something he did that…”

“No,” Steve cut her off, not unkindly but firmly - saw her pull back like maybe she’d overstepped. “It’s okay, Kono, it’s just… that it’s not about work. Not even ten percent about work, really.”

“Ohhh,” She was sitting up, nodding firmly in a way that made Steve’s nerves sing a little. “I see.”

“What does that, mean, that ‘ohhhh’?”

“Nothing, um, except, well…..” Now she was the one fidgeting, in a most un-Kono like way, and flushing, too. “Thing is, Steve…I know.”

“Know what?”

“That you, uh… well: Danny.  You …like him. Not to sound like a teenager, sir, but… you ‘like’ like him. Prefer him. Desi…”

“Message received,” Steve sat back, rocking in his chair, watching her look thankful for him jumping in.

What to do with this? Confirm - or deflect? Steve was used to thinking tactically and three steps out: A quick survey of the options said she wasn’t buying deflection at this point or she wouldn’t be sitting here at all.

“Do you think anyone else knows?” Steve finally asked.

A technical non-confirmation without being defensive: Seemed like the next best move on the current board. And it left room to back out of this.

“Um…honestly? Everyone does,” Kono said. “Or… almost everyone.”

“Excuse me?”

“Steve…” She sat up, arms loose, hands in her lap in a way that suggested great confidence in the information she was dispensing. “Everyone on Oahu who has ever known you or even talked with you both for more than about ten minutes…knows. So, yeah….people. All of them. Except….here’s the thing: Maybe not Danny. I’m not so sure he knows. I mean he knows you care about him, but… I think he thinks you’ll never go there. Sorry, if that’s too much…”

Oddly, the bomb having dropped, Steve felt better.  Or maybe it wasn’t so odd, he thought.

“No. It’s not. And I think you’re right,” Steve mused out loud. “I mean… we’ve said it, you know… to each other.”

“You have?” Kono’s head flew up, her eyes wide.

“Well, yeah, Kono. _I’m_ sorry if _that’s_ TMI, but… you did open the conversation.”

“Yes. And now, I think, is where I should bow out of it,” Kono was up with a little ‘out of here’ wave. “I mean…if you want to talk with me about it you can, of course, but…”

“You’re not the person who needs to hear it,” Steve finished for her. “You’re absolutely right. Thanks, Kono.”

“Sure thing.  I hope… I hope everything will be okay.”

“Me too.”

-*-

_Need you to swing by my place to talk - 7pm?_

Danny frowned at the text message, and set his phone down. The light turned green and he hit the accelerator, debating internally how to reply.

He and Steve had spent most of Thursday on different cases, which was fine - especially since it wasn’t contrived or anything, it was simply how their day had gone. But if he was honest, it had been a relief.  Now it was close to five, and he had been looking forward to escaping this day without any tension between them.

He waited ’til the next red light to text back.

_Is this about work or about you being a touchy, closed-off s.o.b.?_

He didn’t need to wait long to look back for a reply; it was rush hour, stop-and-go, and the drive into town from Ewa would take him a full hour and fifteen, easy.

_Bring Beer._

“Bring beer? Are you…frigging _kidding_ me?” Danny said it out loud to himself. “Can you believe this schmuck - come to my house and bring me beer, oh lowly serf of mine. Jesus…Steven…”

 _You’ve always got beer in your fridge_.   _Don’t try to tell me you have none._

_I have steaks and lobster tails. Bring beer._

_Fine. I’ll bring beer._

Danny sighed and changed lanes to aim in the general direction of Foodland. With this traffic and the late hour? There wouldn’t be time to hit the office or even swing home, which meant he’d be writing up his notes from the witnesses he’d interviewed later tonight on his own damn time and….

It wasn’t really the change in plans making him cranky, and he knew it.   Beer and lobster tails at Steve’s place after a week of cool, distant propriety meant this was essentially an impeccably catered confrontation.

Probably just as well, he thought.

Time to get this out.

-*-

“Wow, something smells good already….”  

Steve heard Danny up and behind him, walking down the hill to the beach and their chairs.

He was already down there when Danny arrived; sitting in his usual seat, eyes on the water, trying to relax and prepare for this. He sized Danny up, now; turned to give him a glance as his partner walked into view.  Danny looked different than he had all week - like the chip on his shoulder was smaller - or at least like he, maybe, wasn’t holding it out at him; showing it off, daring him to take a verbal swing at it.

Maybe it was something about this place, and the water. He vaguely remembered his parents being happier down here than they’d been most anywhere else.

“Potatoes are baking on the grill,” Steve said. “Got us some corn, too- it’s foiled up and on the side, heating slowly in butter, so….”

“Wooh-hoo…a feast, that’s what we’ve got there. An actual feast,” Danny handed him a beer. “We gonna fight before dinner, or wait ‘til after?”

“How about we don’t fight at all, Danno?”

“I would like that. I’d like it very much,” Danny said; voice sincere but a note of something else in there. “What do you think the odds are? I give it about a three percent chance of happening- unless, that is, we’re not actually here to hash shit out.”

“Oh, we’ll talk,” Steve said; waved him around to ‘his’ chair and Danny opted to take the invitation, heading around him to sit and set a cold six pack between their feet. “But I thought maybe we could act and react like mature adults and…”

“What in our shared experience makes you think there’s any great likelihood of that actually working?

“Because… it’s important. What we’ve been avoiding? It’s important and it could _…. I_ could lose something… critical to me. You know? And that will hurt, so…”

“You don’t think I have any risk of losing something critical?” Danny popped the top on a beer, squinting as it fizzed in the warm air, shaking beer off his fingertips and handing it to Steve. “That I might not end up hurt?”

“No,” Steve took a quick swig. “I don’t see that happening.”

“Interesting,” Danny opened one for himself, too.  “You start, then. Go.”

Something about that word: Interesting. Steve shook his head – wanted to say ‘what the hell does that mean’ but opted for a long look at the ocean….and to start.

“It bothered me a lot when you said the two of us meeting all those years ago… our entire relationship… that all of it means nothing, Danny.  ‘Nada es nada…’ right?  That’s what you said, and it sucked to high heaven, hearing that out of you.”

There was a pause; Steve waiting for him to jump in, to critique his words, but Danny only raised both hands in a modified ‘surrender’ pose that said ‘I’m playing nice, keep talking.’

“When I came home a year and a half ago… I had nothing. No family in my life, no friends  - at least none nearby or anyone, really, who I could talk to. But I had you. I found you and I picked you because… you felt right. Like someone I’d already met, who I was _supposed_ to meet and…you hated me. Go frigging figure, right?”

“Not gonna lie, I did, I really did,” Danny nodded, waggling his beer at him. “I hated you so much.”

Steve couldn’t contain an eye roll, but… he wasn’t letting the gentle jab about times past derail him. He felt the words wanting to flow, like they were taking over whether he liked it or not.

“But then you didn’t, anymore. Did you? Pretty damn quickly, we became friends and… you saved my life in more ways than one. And here’s part that made it hurt, Danny, you saying none of it matters:  Somewhere in all that I seem to have, uh, developed… um… a need to have you around.”

“Oh, you were so close…. so damn close, babe, to actually speaking your mind for once. Nice try, too bad you punted, there….”

“What’s the matter with what I said?”

“ _Need_ to have you _around_? That’s… euphemistic. It’s …insignificant, needing to have someone around, it’s…”

“Danny….”

“….empty words. I mean, you need a toothbrush around, right? You need shoe strings for your boots and gas in your truck, but…”

“Damn it, Danny….”

“You don’t get hurt and slam the emotional door on them if they let you down, do you? If your engine knocks or your laces break… you don’t stop talking to them for a goddamned week.”

Well, that seemed to put an end to the conversation; Steve slumped into the comfort of his chair, feeling like the wind was out of his sail. He’d get up and leave if it weren’t his house, but…

His heart jumped when he felt a hand on his forearm; Danny’s palm, cool from the beer bottle, pressing in with a reassuring squeeze instead of a rant. And as was so often the case, they seemed to communicate best when it was in silence.

“I think I’m a little in love with you, Danny,” Steve couldn’t take his eyes off the water to say it, but…there it was.

“I know,” Danny said.

For a second- just a split second – it looked to Steve’s eyes like the whole beach in front of him tilted and shifted; the world going off its axis.

“You…. what?” He half turned in his chair to see Danny nodding; nothing cocky on his face, no grin just a patient return of his gaze.

“I know you do. Have a thing for me.”

 

“How long have you known?”

“Oh, I don’t remember, really, Steven… the week we frigging met, maybe? I’m a detective, buddy,” And there it was- Danny leaning in, getting in his face a little, locking eyes with smile that said to lighten the hell up, maybe, it wasn’t cancer. “You look at me sometimes… like I hung the moon. Do you think I don’t feel it every time you flash me the puppy eyes, or squeeze me half to death with those…ridiculous, ridiculous arms?”

“Kono said everyone knows.”

“She may be right. And I may be crazy….because it’s mutual.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said it’s mutual. Sometimes, I look at you and I want to...well, I want to kill you. Or slap some sense into you. But other times… I _want_. So how do you like that?.”

“This is…not what I expected to hear out of you.”

“Clearly. You look like you’re in shock. You okay? Sip your beer, take a breath…shake it off…”

“Why the hell did you say it means nothing, Danny? Us meeting - having met before, years before. How could it mean nothing to you?”

“I did not say that, Steven, I did not say it meant nothing to me. I said in the greater scheme of the universe….”

“Oh, c’mon…. now who’s tap dancing? You said it…and you meant it. At least be honest about it.”

“Okay, seriously… deep breath. I let you talk, so shut up, please, and let me, too? Consider me, Steve. Consider….why I _am_ the way I am. All right? You think you came here with nothing? I came here with less than nothing – I’d lost my family, my plan for the next forty five years or so. What if _that_ was the be all and end all of my existence – exactly what the universe intended for me, and I screwed it up. You know who survives that? Someone who decides that nothing means anything, after all: That the universe is random and cruel and the specifics of who we meet and who we love- _how_ we get our hearts broken is all noise. Is anything I’m saying here resonating with you?”

“Maybe,” Steve couldn’t help noticing how much Danny’s expression changed – how much he looked like the guy he’d met eighteen months ago who had a lot of bitterness and hurt inside.   “We all hang on to a philosophy of some kind, I guess. Your way wouldn’t be my way…obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“But I guess I hear what you’re saying.”

The silence then was heavier - the sky going pink and cornflower blue as the sun started to set.

“So…” Danny asked him, eventually, pulling another beer from the pack and handing it to Steve. “What _were_ you wishing on that star, all those damn years ago?”

“I was asking for someone to be with. To have a life with. Eventually, you know, ‘cause I had places to go and things to do back then but…. yeah. That’s what I was wishing for.”

“And then I walked right into you. Just like that.”

“So you admit it,” Steve said, happy to accept the tinge of ‘go figure’ in Danny’s voice as some acknowledgment that it was, at least, very odd. “You admit… you walked into me. I was not at fault….”

“Give it up, sunshine. You were stargazing. You’re not winning that argument.”

“I don’t think we did argue.”

“The night is young,” Steve watched Danny push up from his chair, extending a hand. “Let’s go cook that food up. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

-*-

Danny blamed the events that followed on Steve's absurdly beautiful beach, his surprisingly tasty cooking skills and that stupid, sweet twisted smile of his.

"Stop it," he said against Steve's lips, trying to pull back a step, but Steve's arms were locked around him - thumbs through Danny's belt loops and hands warm and heavy against his his hips.

"Stay with me," Steve said back, planting more warm, wet kisses on his mouth and nipping at his lower lip, that twisty grin looking downright frigging victorious. "Stay here tonight?"

Dinner had been amazing- as cheap as Steve could be at a bar, he did serve up a hell of a meal. They had taken a walk up the beach to digest, and went further than planned. Somewhere on the half-hour walk back Danny had found they were holding hands - and he couldn't even remember it starting to happen. 

Kind of like 'them,' really. 

"Can't stay. Wouldn't if I wanted to," Danny said, although his traitorous hands were now caressing Steve's arms - squeezing and stroking his way up toward those shoulders and....son of a bitch it felt better than he'd imagined. "We need to talk more. And I've got work to do. Notes from work. Gotta...transcribe...them...before I forg...."

The rest got lost in Steve pressing against him harder; Steve's fingers in the back of his hair, tugging his head back, Steve's tongue flicking along his lips - asking to be let in. 

What was there to do?  Danny let go; relaxed into those arms, his jaw slack, Steve kissing him deep and a little rough and _humming_ into his damn mouth until Danny was dizzy.

When had a kiss last made him dizzy? Tenth grade? 

"This is ...a bad idea." He did mange to pull away a little, Steve looking disappointed but still hopeful and maybe a little sheepish, too.

"Danny... we can talk tomorrow. You can work _tomorrow_ ," Steve started walking again; reached back his hand and Danny took it. "But after seventeen years and a million miles alone...I think we deserve this."

"Deserve what, exactly?" Danny asked, catching up and sliding his arm around Steve's lower back, hand cupping his side. "I'd kind of like to get an idea what I'm committing to by saying yes, before we even discuss the ramifications and the what ifs of where all this is going. You know?"

Steve shook his head like he was shaking off Danny's desire to be logical and rational. Then he looked up at the sky, nodding at it, urging Danny's eyes upward, too.

"I wish I may, I wish I might..." Steve said it soft and low - like a chant. Like an incantation. "....get the wish I wish tonight."

Well, damn.

"Who says you're not romantic?" Danny stopped them again, waving Steve in for another kiss.

"I think I am," Steve dropped in, no objections. "I think...I _can_ be. Sometimes."

It took them another ten minutes to get up the beach, but what was the rush? They were going to get into Steve's bed, and the rest? Work and 'what ifs' and all the real-life pressures that came with something like this? They'd get taken care of later.

Tonight the stars were in charge.  


End file.
